Our most exciting news is that Jeff is back home after his travels to Paris, France. It was a long 8 days for Gracie, she sure missed her daddy. Gracie and I had just arrived home when the taxi dropped Jeff off. I took Gracie to the window to see him and she was mondo excited, then she ran to the steps, jumped into Jeff's arms for the biggest hug and she was not going to let go! For the rest of the night she was daddy's girl. She started to refer to him not as just "daddy", but "MY daddy", big emphasis on the "MY"!
That evening we went outside for a walk and to play and she chattered the whole night long. She was so happy. At one point she wanted to swing on her swingset. She looked at Jeff and said "swing baby swing". That cracked us up.
On Wednesday morning, she did not want to go to daycare. Jeff was going to drop her off and she had a major meltdown, she layed on her bed and cried and cried. Finally, in his infinite wisdom, Jeff realized that the day he left for Paris, he was the one that dropped her off at daycare and then he of course disappeared for 8 days. So he sat down beside her and asked her if that was why she was so sad. Of course it was. He told her that he wasn't going to leave, matter-of-fact, he was the one that was going to pick her up that day. It took a minute and all of a sudden all was well. She has so much going on in that head of hers, and unfortunately with her speech delays, she can't express it.
Yesterday afternoon we met with a new developmental pediatrician and we love her. Dr. S. and I sat on the local IEIC committee together so we knew each other, but not well. She is only with our clinic for a year, but we will see her one more time before she leaves and we are welcome to contact her with any questions. This visit was to see where Gracie is at developmentally and to see if we are on track with the right interventions and assistance for her. Gracie performed beautifully at the appointment and really gave Dr. S. a true sample of her abilities. Her language skills were assessed at a 2 to 2-1/2 year old developmental age, as were her gross motor skills. Her inability to be able to jump brought her down on that a little bit, but she is doing quite well there and we were all ecstatic at how much progress she has made in both of those areas. We will be meeting with a speech pathologist for a consult as Gracie has the words, but the pronounciations aren't always understandable to others. I can understand her the majority of the time, but others cannot. So that is scheduled for early November.
Gracie's skill level for fine motor skills is really where her challenges are. Although she can do many things she wasn't able to do a year ago, she still has alot of difficulty in that area. She was assessed at a 14-month old level on her fine motor skills. We talked about having her start back up in the occupational therapy program again at the clinic, but Gracie was very resistant to this when she was in the program and the one-on-one therapy frustrated her. With the frustration level being so high, she became very resistant to do anything that was asked of her. So essentially this boils down to it being a waste of her and our time. She is more cooperative in the school setting when she is doing these activities next to peers, so we'll continue that. We'll also continue to push more of those skills at home, although she does get resistant with us when we push those too hard.
The appointment was a great validation for Jeff and I that we are handling behaviors correctly, that we seem to have a good handle on her development and know what we need to continue working on. Gracie was her charming social self and loved all of the attention. She even politely said "Excuse Me" when she let out a big burp!
Today was picture day at school and for some reason I had a really hard time deciding what to have her wear. The shirt that I decided on was new and hadn't been washed, even though I thought it had. With her sensitivities she doesn't get to wear anything without me washing it first. So I had to go to Plan B -- actually Plan C (as Plan B might have been a bit too colorful), which was a solid pink baby doll type top. She did look adorable. We practiced our smile, so now I'm anxious to see the photos.
Have a great day...it got into the 30's last night here. BRRRRRR!
Love,
Lisa, Jeff, and Gracie
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment